Go
by Kgirl1
Summary: Ever since the war came to Ryloth, Hera Syndulla had wanted to fly. And ever since the war came to Ryloth, her father wouldn't let her. Takes place before "A New Dawn."


**A/N: Okay, so I updated Room for One More on Monday, and in that evening's episode, Kanan and Hera kissed. Imagine what could happen after I post this fic! Just kidding. But seriously, November 6, 2017, was officially the best day of my life. PMs to discuss (or just fangirl and scream forever) are always welcome.**

 **This little ficlet is my take on the fight we all know Cham and Hera had when she left Ryloth. I wrote it a while back, and just recently re-discovered it. Hooray! P.S. I'm working on getting Cham added to the character list (strangely, he isn't on there).**

* * *

Hera stood outside her father's office door, filling her lungs with a deep, shaky breath. She could hear murmuring from inside, the same talk of war and liberation that had plagued this space for years now. The enemy changed, sure, but the objective was always the same.

 _Freedom._

Hera only hoped her father could understand that she had the same goal. With one last inhale, filling her chest with both air and courage, she pushed open the office doors. Cham was speaking to one of his officials in low tones at his desk; when she entered, he looked up, and irritation instantly crossed his features. A silent sigh passed through his chest.

"Hera, can't it wait—"

"No." She brushed past the guards at the door and walked right up to his desk. Cham exchanged an exasperated glance with the twi'lek he'd been speaking to, and that only angered her more. Hera put her hands on the desk and took a deep breath.

"Father," she said, "I want to fly."

Cham stiffened, and he released a slow breath through his teeth.

"I told you to stop asking that," he said lowly.

A fragment of her childhood self wavered in fear at his tone, but Hera squashed it down and thrust her chin up, undeterred. "I'm not asking. I'm telling. I'm leaving, Father," she said. "I'm going to learn to fly."

With a cold, swift motion, Cham turned away from her and spoke to the male twi'lek. "My apologies, Lieutenant. We'll have to continue this discussion another time."

He nodded, and the lieutenant nodded in return. Cham raised his eyebrows at the guards, who followed the guest out and closed the door behind them. It shut with a heavy thud, making Hera flinch—not at the sound, but at what was to come.

The moment it shut, Cham stood up. His eyes glinted. "How _dare_ you act so disrespectfully? In front of the lieutenant, no less!"

Hera steeled herself, despite every bone in her body screaming to recoil. "I'm not surprised you care more about what he thinks than what I do," she retorted.

Cham's eyes widened in outrage. "That is _not_ the tone with which you speak to your father—"

"Yeah, well at least you're finally listening," Hera said, putting bite in every word. Cham looked so taken aback by his daughter's attitude that she might as well have sprouted wings herself. The insolence in her rebuttal surprised even Hera, but she seized the opportunity to continue.

"There's a trader, leaving Ryloth tomorrow," she said. "He's agreed to take me off-world to a flight school in the Outer Rim. It's already been arranged, Father." One last sentence, her ultimatum, clung to the edge of her lips but refused to leave. Hera's hands were shaking, but her chest was filled with fire.

Cham opened his mouth and closed it, shaking his head. His eyes looked like the murky pools she'd been told not to play in as a child—though nobody could see to the bottom, they knew something dangerous was hiding there. "Are you doing this to spite me, child?"

Sometimes, what hurt the most about the fighting, was not how restrictive he could be, but how little he understood.

"I'm doing this because it's my dream," Hera said. "If you'd listened to me _once_ since Mother died you would remember that!"

"Do you know what I hear when I listen to you, Hera?" Cham narrowed his eyes. The air around him was suddenly charged with venom. "The puerile, senseless fantasies of a youngling whose head is stuck in the clouds!"

The comment stung, but it lit a match within Hera, and she bit right back. "I'd rather have my head in the clouds than stuck in Ryloth's sand for the rest of my life!"

Cham's lekku twitched, and he leaned forward, intent with anger. "After everything I've done for you—"

"For me?!" Hera could hardly believe what she was hearing, and a shriek of laughter shot from her chest. "Everything _you've_ ever done has been for Ryloth!"

Cham jerked back at the outburst. The paroxysm had Hera's chest burning, and she took a deep breath to recover from it. She leveled her stare at her father.

"All you've ever done for me," she said, making her voice deathly even, "Is keep me trapped."

Cham stared back, his eyes so dark she thought she'd get lost in them.

"I, am trying, to protect you," he said. His voice had dropped lower than the floor beneath them.

"I stopped needing protecting a long time ago," Hera matched his tone. "You weren't around enough to notice."

They faced each other, feet planted, shoulders stiff. The temperature in the room felt like it had dropped twenty degrees since she'd entered. Hera could feel her father's eyes burning into her, sizing her up like a new military threat, but she thrust her head high and stood her ground. He wouldn't stand in her way this time.

Cham spoke again, low and threatening. "You are throwing away everything your mother died for. You dishonor her, and you dishonor me."

The words stung, and they cut deeper than she'd ever let him know, but Hera just folded her arms.

"Mother would have wanted me to follow my dream."

Cham ignored her. "If you walk out that door, you are forsaking everything." His voice grew like a shadow as the sun went down. "Our people will know you abandoned them in their time of need." He said it like he was giving a speech, like in his mind, she'd already been denounced as a criminal of war.

"I'm leaving to fight for all of us." Hera fought to keep her voice steady.

"You're leaving for yourself," Cham snapped. The cool, collected military leader in him vanished, snatched away by raw anger. "Don't lift your nose so high that you can't see the sand."

It was an old twi'lek adage, used countless times when a young hotshot needed to be knocked down a peg or two, and it stung. Hera felt her own heritage being turned against her like a slap in the face. Her heart suddenly felt sore; they'd gone through this quarrel so many times that it had started to feel like a rehearsed dance in which they always rounded back to the same place they'd started, and she was sick of the steps. She spoke the words that hadn't made it out the first time.

"You can't stop me, Father."

It was her ultimatum, the truth that had given her the courage to face him like this. Because as devastating as it was, it was true. He couldn't.

Cham stared at her until something in his expression broke, and she saw an ephemeral glimpse of what almost looked like defeat. The emotion was so contradictory to everything her father was that Hera was certain she'd imagined it. It vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by a hard sheet of durasteel, crashing over Cham's face and blocking out any semblance of emotion. His eyes were two stones in the desert of his skin, his mouth a hard crack in the sand.

"Then go."

The words hit her like a blow. Hera had thought that facing her father would be the hardest thing she'd ever done—she now realized that it would be leaving him, with the knowledge that those would be the last two words he'd ever say to her.

She took a deep breath, picked up one foot and then the other, and turned.

"Goodbye, Father."

He was silent as he watched her go.

* * *

Hera made it as far as the trader's ship, as far as the jump to hyperspace, as far as the planet that would become her temporary home, and as far as her new bunk at the flight school, until she stared crying.

She would never know that her father's tears had fallen the moment she closed the door.


End file.
